[vc_row full_width=”” parallax=”” parallax_image=””][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]

ZAMBIA PHOTO GALLERY:

The students, teachers and communities behind a literacy transformation

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”” parallax=”” parallax_image=””][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]From eager students to dedicated teachers, see the faces behind the achievements of USAID’s Read to Succeed project.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”grey” align=”align_center” style=”” border_width=”” el_width=””][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner el_class=”” width=”1/1″][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/12″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=”sidebar-primary”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row full_width=”” parallax=”” parallax_image=””][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]

In Zambia, creating a culture of reading takes a village

By Jillian Slutzker

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”” parallax=”” parallax_image=””][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Lundazi, Zambia—With storybooks scattered around him on a blanket outside his family’s hut in their rural village near Lundazi, a town in Zambia’s Eastern Province, six-year-old Nowa Ngulube announces his big dreams.

“I want to become president,” he declares.

His father, Aaron Ngulube, the community leader of Kamberere Unga village, smiles an approval for his younger son’s big dream—a dream that requires a good education and literacy. Nowa’s older brother is in the sixth grade and cannot read.

This year, Nowa’s school took part in a “whole school, whole teacher, whole learner-oriented” approach to boost early grade literacy in pupils’ local Zambian languages. Led by the Ministry of Education, Science, Vocational Training and Early Education, the USAID/Read to Succeed project aims to address five key elements common to school effectiveness: learning, teaching, school management, responsiveness to a child’s psychosocial needs and parental and community support for education.

In rural areas like Lundazi, where adult literacy rates are low and school dropout runs high, mobilizing community support for education is key to keeping pupils in school and on track for success. Parents play a critical role in inculcating a culture of reading outside the classroom and maintaining pupils’ reading gains through the USAID/Read to Succeed project, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Creative Associates International.

“When we talk about communities, we are also talking about parents. It’s very important that we collaborate with them because the children stay with them. They come from their homes,” says Pilila Gertrude Jere, USAID/Read to Succeed Team Leader for the Eastern Province. “So, if you leave a gap, it means that the whole circle is not complete. The school and the community should be together and move together.”

Moving together for literacy

To mobilize community members and empower them to actively support learner performance and school management, USAID/Read to Succeed has established 1,204 School Community Partnership committees in schools across six Zambian provinces.

The School Community Partnerships bring parents, guardians, community leaders and educators together to discuss how to spread the culture of reading beyond the school day and improve school management, teaching quality, infrastructure and community support to the school. The project trains local committee members to guide these meetings.

Rabecca Sakala, Head Teacher at Chiginya Primary School in Lundazi, says she needs parents to be involved.

“We don’t want the parents there out there. They have to own the program, also. They have to support the program,” says Sakala. “That’s why we came up with this School Community Partnership committee, and they’re doing a tremendous job.”

Through the committees, schools prepares Learner Performance Improvement Plans with community members and display progress on school walls so parents can see what is working and where additional support is needed. Teachers regularly invite parents to observe lessons to see how their children are progressing and how the teachers use the new phonics-based methods in class, which can help parents provide more effective assistance to pupils at home.

In participating schools across Zambia, School Community Partnerships have launched innovative initiatives to enhance the reading culture, not only in the school but also in the villages—from adult literacy classes so parents can better assist children at home to the construction of reading shelters at schools that give pupils more opportunity to practice their reading skills.

With Creative’s whole child, whole teacher, whole school approach, “the school is not only owned by the teachers or the pupils,” says Lidah Mbewe, Head Teacher at Lutembwe Primary School in Chipata, the capital of Eastern Province. Community members “are free to come in at any time, find out whatever they want to find out, and assist wherever, in whichever way they can assist.”

Empowering communities with a sense of ownership of their schools and the project is imperative to long lasting progress for pupils and the success of the project.

“A learner is ours when she or he is in school, but when she or he goes home, again, the parents must continue where the teachers have all stopped. Learning does not only take place at school, even at home it has to continue,” says Mbewe. “So when we put all these things together, it means we’re helping this poor child to progress.”

Down the road from Nowa Ngulube’s family in the Ngonyala village, Donald Zimba says he has seen progress in a short time through USAID/Read to Succeed. His son, daughter and niece have made strides in their reading and writing, he says, and the community’s relationship with the school has grown stronger.

“There is a unity between the parents and teachers,” says Zimba. “When the children are stuck, the parents are called to see what the children are doing. This is improving the reading culture.”

Supporting neighbors to keep children in school

In many rural, poor or agricultural communities around Zambia, challenges outside the classroom can threaten the gains made in school and derail learners from moving forward.

Early marriages, illness, or needing to work to support the family contribute to higher rates of pupils’ absenteeism in these areas.

Additionally, HIV/AIDS has left more than 670,000 children orphaned throughout the country, according to UNICEF data from 2012. More than 1.4 million Zambian children are orphans due to HIV/AIDS and other causes combined.

“We have a challenge of a number of vulnerable children that have got no support. So we have high number of [orphans and vulnerable children] in our schools,” says Herbert Mwiinga, District Education Board Secretary in Lundazi.

For these vulnerable children, USAID/Read to Succeed’s School Community Partnerships are filling the gap. The committees hold community dialogues on special care and support to orphans and vulnerable children and spread important messages about preventing HIV/AIDS, lowering school absenteeism and delaying early marriages. The committees have also trained others on how to speak out about these issues.

Through home visits and outreach, School Community Partnership committees across beneficiary school have encouraged parents to send their children, and especially their girls, back to school.

From 2013-2014, pupils’ attendance across all USAID/Read to Succeed districts rose nearly 3 percent on average, from 72.95 percent to 75.47 percent across all participating school districts in 2014.

Some districts showed substantial improvements—for example, pupils’ attendance in Isoka, Muchinga Province climbed by 27 percent.

The activities of the School Community Partnership committees are shifting norms around the value of education and school attendance. With community support, some schools in the Mongu District of Western Province formulated by-laws that compel parents to send their children to school. According to the agreement, if a child misses school for two consecutive days without a reason, parents are reported to the village headman for action.

In many of the schools, community members have also stepped in to tender school gardens and provide meals at school for pupils to incentivize school attendance for children who would otherwise go without food.

Community support brings sustainable progress

With the ongoing engagement and investment of the community, educators and government officials say they are confident that positive outcomes of USAID/Read to Succeed will be sustained long after the project itself comes to an end.

“We have to continue the program. Why?” asks Sakala. “Because the community now has been sensitized on the importance of participation. And they know the importance of education. Meaning that even if [USAID/Read to Succeed] goes away, we will still continue.”

District Education Board Secretary Mwiinga agrees, noting that pupils’ success in reading also brings greater benefits back to the communities.

“If they are able to read, and then comprehend what they are reading, then it means we have opened a lot of gates for them for future success­ at the individual level, but also eventually for the family, and then for the larger community,” he says.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/12″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=”sidebar-primary”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row full_width=”” parallax=”” parallax_image=””][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]

Ongoing teacher development brings student literacy gains

By Jillian Slutzker

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”” parallax=”” parallax_image=””][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Chipata, Zambia—Inside the classroom, with their students on recess outside, seven primary school teachers scramble to assemble a word puzzle, moving around paper letter tiles in a race to spell the assigned word.

In this classroom, it is the teachers who are learning as they practice new active, phonics-based methods that will improve their learners’ literacy levels.

The Gondar Primary School, where they teach, is one of more than 1,200 schools around Zambia taking part in Read to Succeed—a U.S. Agency for International Development-funded project to improve reading among pupils in grades 1 to 4 in local Zambian languages.

Continuing professional development, including teacher group meetings, is a key component of the project’s “whole school, whole teacher, whole learner” approach.

“We work with teachers individually to develop their skills in reading pedagogy and to become professional, reflective practitioners, to be motivated and responsive to their children and be accountable for the results of their students,” says Tassew Zewdie, Chief of Party for USAID/Read to Succeed, which is implemented by Creative Associates International.

Only around 65 percent of Zambians ages 15 to 24 are literate, according to UNESCO data from 2015, placing the country well behind its neighbors in the Southern African Development Community. Poor teaching methods and ineffective curriculum have been part of the problem, according to education officials, and pupils were taught in English before they could read or write in their mother-tongue.

“At all levels, from foundation level up to tertiary education, the reading culture has been very low in Zambia,” says Francis Sampa, Deputy Chief of Party and Teacher Development Advisor for USAID/Read to Succeed. “The challenges include have a lack of reading resources in schools and inadequate training among the teachers for teaching reading.”

Guided by the Ministry of Education, Science, Vocational Training and Early Education’s (MESVTEE) Primary Literacy Familiar language curriculum, USAID/Read to Succeed has trained more than 6,200 teachers and more than 3,100 education managers in the effective phonics-based reading pedagogy.

“The teachers have to be capacity-built, they have to be trained in order for them to implement [the new curriculum] effectively,” says Esvah Chizambe, Assistant Director of Teacher Education at the MESVTEE.

Phonics, key to teaching literacy

Phonics is one of the five major components of reading instruction, in which teachers are trained, along with phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

At Katopola Primary School in Chipata, Head Teacher Edna Simwanza says the phonics-based teaching tools are revolutionizing student learning.

“Before Read to Succeed, a child could go to grade four without knowing how to read. They could identify maybe pictures, but relating the picture to words was a problem,” she says. “But after Read to Succeed came, we have seen the methodology changing where children are taught how to sound the letters, and not to name the letters…. It has helped them to attack the words in a better way.”

In Katopala Primary School classrooms and around Zambia’s Eastern Province, there are loud and clear signs that the phonics-based teaching methods are helping learners read.

In Tembo Aaron Mangani’s third grade class at the Mankhaka Primary School in rural Lundazi, pupils shout at answers as they sound out words beginning with the sound of the day— “nkh.”

As Mangani posts a short story he has written on the board, featuring the sound “nkh”—a method he learned in training—students’ hands shoot into the air, hoping for a chance to put their new skills on display. He says that in the past, his pupils had difficulty reading and used to rely on pictures to memorize the words of a story.

“If you remove the picture, then the reading goes,” he says. “But now they are able to attack a word using the sounds. That has greatly improved the reading levels.”

Coaching and collaboration sparks creativity

Through the MESVTEE’s Education Support Teams at the national, provincial, district, zonal and school level, USAID/Read to Succeed ensures that ongoing support and professional development is available to teachers and head teachers as they practice these new approaches.

“By using education support teams that are based at these various, we would like to bring the training as close as possible to the teachers,” says Sampa.

The in-service training teams are especially critical, says Chizambe, MESVTEE Assistant Director for Teacher Education.

“My officers in the in-service unit—the reading team—are ensuring that the teachers are receiving the capacities they needed to implement the literacy program,” she says.

The MESVTEE and USAID/Read to Succeed have also mainstreamed the Primary Literacy Program in the pre-service teacher education program to train in-coming primary teachers at colleges of education in the revised curriculum, says Chizambe.

At each participating primary school, between four to six teachers have been trained in improved methods for teaching literacy, so that they can serve as mentors to their fellow teachers, using the USAID/Read to Succeed Teacher’s Guide and School-Based Coaching Handbook.

“In the training manuals, we have encouraged teachers to meet after zone trainings in their schools to share what they learned with other teachers who may not have attended so that they can work together and identify the good practices that they can encourage in their school,” says Sampa.

Head teachers for their part have received special education leadership and management training to conduct group learner assessments, carry out classroom observations and provide feedback to teachers, pupils and parents for remedial actions.

“We also build the capacity of head teachers particularly looking at head teachers not as administrators but as instructional leaders. So we provide them with necessary skills in order to provide professional support to their teachers in their schools…. or guidance and counseling to students and parents and teachers,” says Zewdie.

Judith Mwendaendi, Head Teacher at Kanele Primary School in Lundazi, says that the peer coaching she has provided to her primary literacy teachers has been very beneficial, energizing her staff and sparking new ideas for teaching.

“My teachers, they are interested in learning how to teach literacy using the methodology. And the main thing that is brought out is creativity. They are saying it is making them think and do a lot,” she says.

Whether introducing new reading games or writing original stories using phonics and local themes, teachers collaborate regularly to sharpen their instructional skills. Much of this coaching and educator collaboration takes place in regular teacher group meetings.

“In the teacher group meetings, we talk about the lesson studies, where we discuss the challenges that we are facing in classes,” says Elizabeth Zimba, a first grade teacher and the in-service training coordinator at Kanele Primary School. “We share a lot of ideas in the teacher group meetings. Sometimes we learn even what we didn’t know.”

Coaching goes mobile

With more than 1,200 primary schools participating in the USAID/Read to Succeed Project across six provinces, often in remote rural areas, keeping tabs on teacher and student performance can be challenging for the MESVTEE.

However, USAID/Read to Succeed has developed an innovative SMS mobile reporting and coaching system, called Zambia Schools Gateway, which has made tracking teacher and student progress and connecting educators nationwide as easy as a hitting the “send” button.

The project has trained all head teachers as well as all district resource center coordinators, district standard officers, district statisticians and provincial standard officers on the use of system. The cellphone-based reporting application allows head teachers to enter data on their students’ and teachers’ performance into a database that can be viewed at the district level.

“Those reports are then turned into report cards, which go back to the schools in zones, and that’s the basis for everyone to see areas of strengths and weakness, so that they can identify the problem and come up with strategies to fix them,” says Guy Bostock, who manages the Zambia Schools Gateway and oversees head teachers’ training and coaching for USAID/Read to Succeed.

Through the SMS system, MESVTEE district officials can send questions to all head teachers in a particular zone, he explains.

“So they might ask, “What problems are you having with implementing the primary literacy program in grade three?” And then every head teacher can send back his own answer.”

Bostock says teachers may say cite a lag in training of a new teacher, a lack of materials or issues pronouncing certain phonetic sounds. The District Education Support Team then views these responses and determines where extra support is needed to teachers.

New tools at the right time

Equipped with the revised literacy curriculum and supported by fellow teachers in their schools, teachers in primary schools and school leaders are finding new enthusiasm and promise in their efforts to teach reading and writing.

“Head teachers and deputy heads do seem to be much more excited about their work,” says Bostock. “I think some of the tools we’ve given them, like classroom observation schedule to use to watch teachers teaching early grade reading and give them coaching, and also a sampling test that the head teachers administer to the grade two [students] twice a year, that’s really given them tools to see what’s happening.”

And “what’s happening” in the classrooms across Eastern Province is substantive literacy gains among primary school pupils and renewed commitment among teachers to use their phonics-based teaching skills to bring literacy to life.

“Many teachers and learners in schools have started working very hard,” says Head Teacher Mwendaendi.

She says the USAID/Read to Succeed project came at the right time when teachers in the district were struggling to teach reading effectively and students were performing poorly.

“So when Read to Succeed came, as managers or administrators, we saw that it was a blessing in disguise,” she says. “Because looking at the way the procedures are being taken, most of the teachers are enjoying their teaching, and the learners have achieved a lot.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/12″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=”sidebar-primary”][/vc_column][/vc_row]